Great but short
| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| Wii | 8.00 |
| Overall | 8.00 |
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I think it's time we all bit the bullet on this one. I think you know how I've bitched about it. How I've stomped my foot, or scoffed at the developers insistence on calling this a "guided first person experience". After actually getting the game home and having played the original on my 360 I can actually eat some crow and say that, yeah.... like the majority of reviews have said: this is good stuff. Despite the perspective change, what I can say is that this IS the dead space experience, its the same world, atmosphere, story, visuals, even mechanics. It's not strictly a lightgun game, it's paced like an interactive movie. It has stellar production values and polish, perhaps being the best looking game on the system (ignore the screens) many reviews said that RE Darkside Chronicles doesn't look as good as Extraction. And it piles on subtle layers of depth, like a Gears of war reload mechanic, or even using the same telekenesis and stasis powers of the first game. These powers work a lot better on Wii with its hyper accurate aiming. There is even a 3D saw weapon which you can move into and out of the screen in an Elebits style move. Slicing and dicing with a Krull like hand weapon. Waggle is restricted to shaking bad guys off you, it seems redundent and annoying and it is, but thankfully its very limited. More impressive is the world it presents, if we can say that the story in Dead Space was a grain of sand, the story in Extraction is like a whole beach. There is more dialogue in the very first mission than the entirety of Dead Space. Nicely, it includes hidden logs and lots of character interaction which gives you actual background story, explaining away all the obtuse, intricate and pivitol parts of the Dead Space story. It loses the isolated fear and exploration of the first game but gains in the interaction with multiple characters and the crumbling terror of the post marker chaos. Also, as someone who has played hours of HD Dead Space in all its glory and detail, the visuals still regularly impress. Seeing how Call of Duty MW REFLEX and Extraction both tend to thrust characters point blank in your face the difference is hugely telling, seeing it made from the ground up. The gameplay isn't traditional lightgun, the ammo is finite and your shots matter. The only weapon with infinite ammo is the rivet gun and that initially has 4 bullets. It can take that much to get the limbs off one monster. No it doesn't have the nostalgia and familiarity of Umbrella Chronicles or the hilarity, style and pacing of Overkill, but Extraction is a unique entity unto itself and well worth getting if you like the franchise. So far it seems like Dead Space 1, minus the hassle and with bags more personality. EA made a big mistake by making an on rails game in the first place but the end product, once you get past that fact, is very high quality. The released screens come nowhere close to showing how nice it looks on an SD set at home. you wont find representative footage anywhere online though. It's not as gory and it doesn't have the shader effects, but the art, lighting and some reflections here and there do a great job of simulating the look of the first game. And the dynamic camera and detailed face animation give the game a very cinematic look. The environments though, I mean this is the Ishimura and there are many parts that are faithfully recreated from the HD game and it looks damned fine considering the comparison. What this game doesn't do so well is organic matter, which is strange because if they merely applied the same mapping and reflection on the organic matter as they do on the character faces it would look much better. I have to say the pacing of the shooting hasn't been altered at all. You dont really get that fast and snappy lightgun experience where you have ammo to spare and can rock it up Overkill style. This game is like Dead Space, frugal with ammo. It's also harder to make out the enemies in the dark. The glowstick can only be used in certain areas and when there is the green glow in the bottom right hand corner you know you can use it. It's paced like the first Dead Space game. You know something is different when you pick up logs and start reading, or have to open doors manually or listen to the characters interacting. It's like an interactive movie almost. It's a shame that its not 3rd person like RE4 because the attention lavished on the environments could make it really great version in this franchise. You dont have the freedom to move and pick your spots to take down the enemy. Or get that thrill of finding a little room stocked with items or a weapons bench. But the game has its advantages, its just a much better realised and populated universe than the original - in terms of recreating a functional realistic working space faring community - with bags more story and even more entertainment. You're not walking through empty husks of sci fi scenary, you're seeing that the containment room has people in it containing themselves from the monsters. The lifts are actually being used, offices are ther, law and order exists on the colony. The Ishimura seems functional and the games logs tells you its functions. The medical bay is in use with actual doctors there. The ame is suprised me with its quality all the time. The pacing is great too and the voice acting and story is pretty high level for a videogame. Funny bit was using a turret in the ship approaching the Ishimura. It was completely LOL inducing how much faster and more intuitive and more fun it was to use IR to shoot down space debris compared to the original. Another funny thing is that the space suits look somewhat like Captain Olimar's in Pikmin. I do wish there was more enemy variety though, but there didn't seem to be that much variety in the first game either. To be fair there are around 7 or so enemy variations not including bosses, but they are all of the freak beast variety. Varying on a similar theme. The game has a time-bending aspect to it. For instance in the first game you might have to find a power cell to plug into a wall to open a door in the medical lab. In Extraction you find out that it was you that pulled that very same cell from the wall to lock to door to a horde of incoming monsters. Very cool. Unfortunately this is only used on a couple of occasions. Also the environments although less detailed are pretty much on par with the original. Man, coming around a corner to the metro train with all your characters and then jumping down onto the train lines, that is something to behold. Because you've been there before as Isaac and now you are seeing how it all was before. Spooky cool. Ooohhh there was a cool plot twist. And yes, in the logs it explains what is happening and why with regards to the marker. Oh, the game uses normal mapping on the character faces about halfway through the game to the end, looks very nice and detailed and it shows up in the darker areas. In fact the facial animation is better than Fallout 3, the mo-cap in general and animation is better too. The length is a problem though. What's there is good, through the roof production values, great voice acting, some of the best facial animation and mo cap I've seen. Decent aiming mechanics, interesting pacing. But when it ends so soon the game just isn't worth full price admission. The thing is, it's not like HOTD Overkill which is so rauceously entertaining you can replay the levels endlessly, being fast and snappy. It's not 12-18hrs worth of RE Umbrella Chronicles. If you replay a level in Extraction the chapters are broken up by long stretches of dialogue, or slowly moving through pipes. It's a game you will play through once, maybe twice but probably not something you can plug in for a lightgun rush. Strangely not having the traditional pacing of a light gun game hurts the replayability of the title. There is a challenge mode which cuts out the chit chat but its not single player minus the cutscenes. It puts you on a largish area and sends waves of enemies at you which you kill for points. It's a snoozefest. So overall, 8.0 but ONLY because of the length. It could easily have been much higher. Get it at a lower price. |
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Posted by gamingeek Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:22:29
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robio (5m)
I'll take your word for it. I hope to pick this game up soon. Looks like a great on-rails shooter.
From what you described it sounds like they made an action/adventure game and for some reason decided the player was to stupid to move on their own, so they made it on rails.
Yeah, sounds about right. And its about 5 and a half hours long. Sad really, it needs another 3 or 4 chapters.
It feels like a waste, not being in the third person because the quality of the environments, weapons, lighting etc are all really high and would make a very decent version of a 3rd person Dead Space game. Making it on rails just killed it from the moment that was announced.
Honestly though the length makes it sweet, but too short. Instead of short and sweet.
I'm getting the feeling that I've overplayed my impressions if you guys think its that good. Remember I only 8.0-ed it.
It's very decent, but too short for its own good. And with little replayability. So yeah, if you can get a good price jump on but don't expect AAA.
I thought this game was masterful (8.5), one of the best that the Wii has to offer. It is one of the sad ironies of this generation, that a Nintendo system becoms the best seller, but so few gamers will experience the best games due to console prejudice.
Anyone who has played and enjoyed the HD Dead Space does themselves a disservice by not playing Extraction.